


no more calling like a crow for a boy for a body in the garden

by eluna



Series: Lungs 'Verse [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Background Dean Winchester, Background Tyson Brady (Demon), Bipolar Disorder, Codependency, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Jessica Moore, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, F/M, Jessica Moore Has Mental Health Issues, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Patient Sam Winchester, Minor Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, POV Sam Winchester, Pre-Season/Series 01, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Stanford Era (Supernatural), Stanford Student Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 22:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18536698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eluna/pseuds/eluna
Summary: “Things are much better now that I’m an adult and I’ve been diagnosed, though,” she tells him after swallowing a huge gulp of orange juice. “I still have fuckups, obviously, like what happened in October, and the doctors are still tweaking my meds trying to figure out the right combination to put me on, but I’m at least not suicidal anymore, and that’s worth a lot. A lot. I mean, you know.”Sam does know. He flashes back to October, sees himself standing in front of the medicine cabinet with Brady’s epilepsy pills in his hand, popping them one after the other. He thinks about Dean and how he still sometimes feels like he’ll die without him, or at least like he’d rather die than live without him. “I’m glad things are better now,” Sam says, and she gives him a knowing look and tells him—“You know, if you ever need to talk, I’m around. I’m not planning on letting you go again without giving you my number.”Sam grins.





	no more calling like a crow for a boy for a body in the garden

**Author's Note:**

> Something other than straight Wincest, for once! Title from Florence + The Machine.
> 
> What you need to know: Sam, in his second year at Stanford and struggling with his romantic feelings for his brother, attempted suicide and ended up in acute psychiatric care for a week or two. He and Dean had a permanent falling out, and Sam befriended Jess, another patient in the hospital.

Brady comes back from Thanksgiving break all fucked up, snorting cocaine in the bathroom and bringing strange women back to his and Sam’s room every other night. Sam tries to help him. He does. He looks up local Narcotics Anonymous groups and emails Brady web pages with twelve-step programs, calls chemistry tutors on his behalf, tells him that he’s _worried_ about him and that he’s here if Brady ever needs someone to listen—but Brady, it seems, never does. When January rolls around, he changes his major from pre-med biology to communication and brushes off Sam’s concern that _he’s failed all his fall courses, what about his scholarship_ , saying, _Why worry about tomorrow when you can take out student loans today?_

After a few months of this, Sam comes to expect to find unfamiliar women sprawled naked in bed with Brady every morning when Sam wakes up, but one day in April, it throws him for a loop when he recognizes the sloping nose, sparkling eyes, and curly blonde hair of one of Brady’s conquests. “Oh, hey,” says Brady genially when Sam sits up in bed and frowns. “Jess, meet my roommate, Sam. Sam, this is Jessica. She’s in her first year at Foothill.”

“Jess! Hey!” says Sam blearily, rubbing his eyes. He wishes that he’d worn a shirt to bed last night and tucks his blanket around his chest like a girl. “We’ve—we’ve met before. I didn’t think I would ever see you again, Jesus—how are you?”

Jess smiles fondly at him and hops out of bed with a blanket wrapped around her like a toga, reaching down and around to retrieve all her clothes from the floor. “I’m good—I mean, I’m better. Glad to be back in school and everything. What about you?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” says Sam absentmindedly, still trapped in his nakedness inside of his sheets.

“Oh, you two know each other?” asks Brady, grabbing and starting to chew obnoxiously on a piece of chewing tobacco.

“Only a little,” Sam says, unsure whether Jess is comfortable with Sam revealing that she spent two weeks last semester in the same psych ward as Sam.

“We should all get breakfast together or something,” says Jess, hovering awkwardly with one hand clamped on the blanket and the other holding her clothes. Sam tries to avert his eyes from where her undergarments are peeking out of the pile.

Brady shakes his head and says, “You two crazy kids go ahead. I have—uh— _class_.” He winks at Sam.

Sam knows Brady’s just going to shoot up in their bathroom again, but what’s he supposed to do, hold Brady down and never leave his side? “Yeah, okay,” Jess says now. “Sam, what’s good around here? I don’t get out to Stanford’s campus too often.”

Sam grins sheepishly. “Do you mind just eating in the dining hall? You can use one of my guest passes. Money’s kind of tight, and my scholarship covers my meal plan, and…”

Jess nods. “Say no more. Let’s just change and we can head out.”

The way she says it makes Sam think for a split second that she’s talking about changing their clothes _together_ , and he feels his cheeks heating up, hopes that his blush isn’t too furious. “Sure. Our bathroom’s right—right there,” he says lamely, pointing at the door around the corner.

It’s weird to see Jess dressed in jeans and a hoodie: in the psych ward, she always stood out in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers from everyone else who dressed in street clothes. She falls into step beside him as she follows him out of the room, down to the first floor, and outside. “It’s so good to see you again,” she tells him with a smile. “I kept kicking myself for not getting your number, but you know how the staff was about us trading contact information with each other…”

“I remember,” says Sam, grinning stupidly. He really does like her, and she’s distractingly pretty, twirling a blonde lock of hair around and around her finger. “So Brady, huh?”

Jess laughs. “I have bipolar disorder, Sam. Impulsive behavior is kind of my thing.”

“I’m sorry,” says Sam, but before he can go on a whole speech, she interrupts him.

“Don’t be. It sucks, yeah, but I’ve made my peace with it.”

They load up on waffles and sausage and get to know what each other’s lives are like outside of the hospital. Like Brady said, Jess is a first-year student up at the community college: she’s trying to save money on tuition by eventually transferring all her credits to Palo Alto University, and Foothill is close enough to her parents’ house that she can commute from home for free. Her grades in high school were never good enough to qualify her for a scholarship: her disorder started affecting her when she was ten or twelve years old, and between the recklessness and the mood swings, she always had too many distractions on her plate to pay much attention to school.

“Things are much better now that I’m an adult and I’ve been diagnosed, though,” she tells him after swallowing a huge gulp of orange juice. “I still have fuckups, obviously, like what happened in October, and the doctors are still tweaking my meds trying to figure out the right combination to put me on, but I’m at least not suicidal anymore, and that’s worth a lot. A lot. I mean, _you_ know.”

Sam does know. He flashes back to October, sees himself standing in front of the medicine cabinet with Brady’s epilepsy pills in his hand, popping them one after the other. He thinks about Dean and how he still sometimes feels like he’ll die without him, or at least like he’d _rather_ die than live without him. “I’m glad things are better now,” Sam says, and she gives him a knowing look and tells him—

“You know, if you ever need to talk, I’m around. I’m not planning on letting you go again without giving you my number.”

Sam grins.

* * *

“You’re really jumping into this relationship with Jessica, aren’t you?” Zach asks three weeks later when they’re out for their every-Friday-night hike, Sam starting to sweat a little with the elevation gain. It’s pleasantly warm outside, even as the sun is starting to drop off, and Sam can feel his T-shirt growing steadily damper.

“Yeah, and?” asks Sam with a little laugh.

“And… how well do you even know this girl? She’s a community college student, no scholarship, no job—”

“Are you suggesting that I’m too good for her?” Sam’s voice takes on an icy edge.

“No. _No_. I just mean—how much do you really have in common?”

“We have things in common,” says Sam. Like they both know what it’s like to swallow a bottle of pills and wait by the phone to die. Like they both have watched the clock and calculated the exact number of minutes left before they can make an excuse to go to sleep. Like they’ve both sat on a twin bed with medical-grade sheets across from a psychiatrist who says the thing wrong with them is something they _know_ isn’t really what’s wrong, and who refuses to hear otherwise. Sam doesn’t care if Jess is a homeless panhandler; sometimes he feels like she gets him more than anyone in his life has ever gotten him, Dean included.

“Yeah, okay,” says Zach, sounding unconvinced. “But don’t you think it’s a little weird to be spending so much time with someone Brady is sleeping with?”

“Slept with, once,” Sam says absentmindedly.

He gets through finals week, and then it’s summer vacation, which is fast becoming Sam’s least favorite time of the year. He spent last summer bumming around the country with Dean in the Impala while their dad worked cases god knew where, but he and Dean haven’t spoken since Sam’s disaster of a suicide attempt and the hospital, and so Sam finds himself an apartment sublet for cheap from May until the end of August and gets himself a job working the circulation desk at the law library.

All his friends go home for the holiday except for Jess, who continues to live at her parents’ house about a twenty-minute drive away from Sam’s sublet. She’s taking two classes at Foothill but otherwise not doing much over the summer, and she drives out to see Sam at Stanford almost every day.

They make out sometimes (a lot) (every night before Jess goes home to her parents’), but they’re not officially dating until they finally, finally broach the subject one evening in July. “I really, really need to get a move on finding housing for this upcoming year,” Sam is complaining to her while they half pay attention to NCIS on the TV in Sam’s sublet. “I didn’t want to deal with Brady’s crap anymore—I mean, he’s my friend, I want to be there for him through whatever this is, but it’s hard living in the middle of all the booze and the women and the drugs—”

“Understandable, and no offense taken,” says Jess; he can tell from her smile that she means it.

“So I figured I would get one of those campus-owned apartments for this year, you know, since my scholarship covers those same as it covers the dorms, but all the studios and one-bedrooms have already filled up, and I don’t know anyone who’s looking to share a two-bedroom with me. I’d have to pay out of pocket for the second bedroom, but I was hoping to save as much of my library wages as I can once the school year starts.”

Jess doesn’t say anything at first, and he thinks it’s just because she’s paying attention to the TV, but then she finally says, “You know, I could stand to move out of my parents’ house this year.”

“What?”

“You know how they are. I love them, but god, I can’t wait to get away from them. I have enough savings to draw on for the first few months of an apartment if I have to, and I can get a job, go to school part-time.”

“Wait, you—you want to live with me this year?”

“What’s so crazy about a girl wanting to live with her boyfriend?”

Sam blinks. “I’m your boyfriend?”

“You don’t want to be?”

“It’s not—I do. I just—we haven’t exactly—discussed it.”

“Sam,” says Jess, and her smile drops off into something more serious, “my life is a piece of shit, okay? No, really, it’s—I go to classes I hate for a degree it feels like I’m never going to finish in the hopes of maybe, _maybe_ being a functional enough adult in spite of my debilitating mental illness to use it to work a 40-hours-a-week job someday that will probably make me hate my life even more. I live with my overprotective parents. I don’t have friends, because people don’t _like_ me, or maybe it’s that I don’t like _people_ —except for you. And I really, really like you. You make—” She grabs his hands; her palms feel sweaty. “You make everything better.”

Sam swallows thickly and squeezes her hands. “You make everything better, too,” he says, by which he means, _I think less about Dean when I’m with you_.

* * *

Jess has been in the bathroom for two hours before Sam belatedly realizes that there’s probably something very wrong. He exits their bedroom, walks past the spare that they use as a study, and rounds the corner to knock on the bathroom door. “Jess? Is, uh—” he clears his throat “—is everything okay in there?”

She doesn’t answer. Sam knocks again. “Jess?”

He hears a huge sniff and then the sound of the door unlocking, and he pushes his way into the tiny room to find Jess sitting on the toilet seat with her head in her hands, biting her lip and sobbing quietly. “Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey. I’m here. What’s wrong?”

When Sam tries to touch her, Jess flinches and jerks out of reach of his hands. “Nothing’s wrong. Why would anything be wrong? Why would it be anything other than my _stupid_ brain making a big deal out of nothing?”

“I’m sure it’s not nothing, if you’re this upset about it,” Sam reasons.

“It’s nothing I can explain rationally. I’m just broken. I—I’m so sorry. I should never have—have foisted myself on you as your roommate like this. I—”

“Jess, you didn’t—I wanted you here, all right?” Sam urges her. He reaches for her shoulders again, and this time he lets him touch her, wind her body towards him for a hug. “I wanted you. I _want_ you.”

“No. No, you _can’t_ mean that. No one ever means that. This was a huge mistake. Fucking bipolar disorder and my fucking impulse control.”

“I’m confused. Do you think it was a mistake because you don’t want me to see you like this, or do you feel like this because you think it was a mistake?”

With a dark chuckle, she says, “It’s both. Super fun vicious cycle, isn’t it?”

Sam frowns. “Are you not happy here?”

“I’m not happy anywhere. I thought maybe, with you, that would finally change, but I guess it doesn’t work that way. People can’t save you. No one can save you.”

“I’ll save you,” Sam murmurs, and Jess says—

“That’s the thing: that’s exactly what killed my last three relationships—people trying to save me, it not working, them taking it personally or—or getting burnt out. You’re not my therapist, okay? And not even she can fix me, and she’s a trained professional. You’re just…”

“Not good enough?”

Jess pulls back so she can look him in the eye. It probably doesn’t have the desired effect, since she’s still crying a little, but he can tell that she’s being deadly serious. “Sam, you are more than good enough. It’s me who’s not good enough. Look at me.”

He looks. “I see someone very, very brave who’s been fighting against her own mind for a very long time. That doesn’t make you not good enough. That makes you strong. Stronger than me, for sure.”

“You’re sweet, but you don’t… you’re not going to keep saying that when you see me keep having epic meltdowns every other night.”

Sam smiles. “Watch me.”

* * *

The thing about taking care of Jess every day is that it distracts Sam from his own problems, like _my brother is gone and I don’t know how to breathe_. It’s pretty easy to comfort her, at first: he just holds her and murmurs nonsense at her and insists that she’s not bad, no matter how many times she says that she is. Sam begins to get intimately acquainted with the feeling of crouching on the bathroom floor tiles with his arms around Jess on the toilet, tuning into her world and all the way out of his own.

And yet, even with how easy and straightforward it is to take care of her—it hurts, latching onto her world for so much of his life, when Sam’s barely holding it together and just doesn’t have the mental resources to devote to seeing another person through that same kind of pain. He comes home from an exhausting Saturday at work one day to find Jess locked in the bathroom again, and he just—snaps. Locks himself in their bedroom and punches Dean’s number into his cell phone before he knows what he’s doing. But it doesn’t ring: he hears a tinny female voice telling him that the number he has dialed has been disconnected, and he hurls his phone at the wall where it shatters into pieces, and he yells at the top of his voice before he starts crying, like a wimp.

He’s been in there maybe twenty minutes before he hears a soft knock at the door. “Sam, baby, please let me in.”

Sam pauses for a long time. “Jess, I’m sorry, but I just can’t right now. Okay? I can’t. You’re going to have to find someone else.”

“It’s not—I can pull it together. I can. I want to be there for you—I don’t want our lives to be like this anymore. Okay? Is that okay?”

He doesn’t answer, but he does pull the door open and stare down at her where she’s standing in the hallway with her hands jammed into her sweatshirt pockets and a frown on her face. Jess is beautiful even when she’s so, so sad. “I’ve been depending on you for everything when you’re not okay, either,” she says after a moment of silence. “You act so healthy all the time that I forget you were in that hospital for a suicide attempt. I’ve tried to kill myself before, too, and you don’t just get over that after two weeks in psychiatric care.”

“I miss my brother,” says Sam, and he’s horrified to hear his voice crack.

“I know. I _know_. Look, I can’t promise to—I’m a mess, okay? We’re both so fucked up that we probably don’t belong together, but—”

“Don’t say that,” he says, heat flashing over his body.

“—But I want to figure it out. Sam, I really, really like you.”

There’s that _like_ word again, and Sam wonders whether it’s too early to tell Jess he loves her. Maybe, when it’s only January, and Brady only reintroduced them last April. “I know we have our problems,” he says, ignoring her scoff, “but I want to figure it out, too.”

“I’ll talk to my psychiatrist about switching mood stabilizers or something,” says Jess firmly. “And I’ll try to spend less time at home—make some friends, so that I have more than just you. Spend more time visiting my parents. And Sam…”

“Yeah?” he says when she doesn’t appear to be about to continue her thought.

She sighs. “You’ve got to start letting me in on what’s going on inside your head. I know you’re having a hard time, too, and you never talk about it, and you never let me help you.”

Sam pauses. “Do you really think you _can_ help me? Really. And that’s not an insult; I just see how much you’re struggling, and I don’t…”

“I can. I’ll work it out. I promise.”

* * *

Jess’s psychiatrist switches her from Lamictal to lithium, and things are better for a while, and then Jess backslides. He increases the dose, and things are better for a while, and then Jess backslides. He adds an antipsychotic, Seroquel, and Jess is suddenly sleeping at normal hours for the first time in her life, and things are better for a while, and then she backslides.

Sam failed most of his classes last semester, too preoccupied with taking care of Jess to keep up with his grades, and now he’s on track to graduate a semester late. He finds that he doesn’t mind as much as he should: he’s got a great group of friends at Stanford, and he’s got Jess, who is still behind Sam in school and plans to graduate after he does. Even if his relationship with her is far from perfect, they love each other (they’ve even said it aloud now), and real family don’t leave each other when the going gets rough.

Junior and senior years pass in a blur of Jess doing everything she can to better manage her disorder: going to therapy twice a week, getting to know Sam’s friends and calling some of them when she could use support, and sleeping over at her parents’ house on particularly bad nights. She still relies on Sam a lot, but he’s gotten better at tapping out when he doesn’t feel up to being there, and she has backup plans in place for when that happens.

He figures out what he wants to do after Stanford—corporate law—and in his super-senior year throws himself into applying to law schools and studying for the LSAT. He’s shocked when he lands himself an interview for a full scholarship to Stanford Law, given his rocky college transcripts, but Sam doesn’t question it, allowing Jess to drag him to a Halloween party to celebrate the interview and his LSAT score (174!).

Sam’s quiet on the walk home, and Jess elbows him in the side and grins. “What’s up with you?” she asks. “I thought you’d be thrilled with the way things are going right now.”

“I am. I am! I just—I wish Dean were here for it, that’s all.”

Despite what they talked about almost two years ago, Sam hasn’t let Jess at all into his head where it concerns Dean and Dad and his issues with his family. It’s the first time he’s said Dean’s name aloud to anyone in months, and Jess frowns and furrows her eyebrows. “Your brother?”

“Yeah. I—I miss him.” Sam’s horrified to feel a lump rising in his throat, and he forces it down with a fake smile. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about me, really.”

“Sam,” says Jess, “this is the brother that you almost killed yourself over. You’re not fooling me.”

Days later, he’ll regret not having opened up almost as much as he’ll regret not doing anything about the dreams he’s been having of Jess burning up on the ceiling, but for today, he just grins wider and says, “I don’t need him when I’ve got you,” and he almost, almost believes it.


End file.
